Artificial pearls point to regression (7)
I believe the answer is:
relapse
'regression' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'artificial pearls point' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
an anagram of 'pearls' is 'relaps' which is within the answer.
'point' could be 'e' (compass point) and 'e' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'to' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for relapse that I've seen before include "Medical setback" , "Fall back into sickness" , "Fall back into illness" , "Backsliding" , "medical problem" .)